‘A hollow victory’: For Assam’s former militants & campaigners, SC win is 24 yrs late

Yet, Sarma and his fellow anti-insurgency campaigners feel dejected. While upholding their right to the jobs, the apex court invoked the “efflux of time elapsed” — the passage of 24 years — to deny reinstatement, modifying the Gauhati High Court’s concurrent orders to a one-time settlement of Rs 5 lakh per person.

“This is a hollow victory,” says 52-year-old Sarma, his voice tinged with resignation. “That amount won’t even cover the interest on the loans we took to pay our lawyers.”

Sarma and the other 30 job applicants were among 67 people appointed under a special state policy during the peak of Assam’s insurgency. Initiated by the Asom Gana Parishad-led government, the surrender-cum-rehabilitation policy mainly aimed at persuading insurgents to lay down arms by offering incentives, including jobs, but also covered activists who helped “mainstream” them.

Dhrubajyoti Sarma, and two others The Indian Express spoke to, fall into the second category.

“I have certificates from the administration for my work in community management and flood relief. This job was an incentive for that service,” he explains.

Today, instead of working as a section officer or undersecretary — positions he estimates he would have reached had he joined as an LDA in 2001 — Sarma works as a delivery partner for e-commerce platforms such as Flipkart and Shiprocket.

The trajectory of the case explains the litigants’ bitterness. Their appointments were made on March 30, 2001, following a Cabinet decision to relax recruitment rules for the rehabilitation policy. Months later, the political tide turned. The Congress came to power and, on May 19, 2001, the new government cancelled all 67 appointments.

The official reason was procedural: the appointment orders were issued by the commissioner and secretary of the secretariat administration department, whereas the appointing authority under the rules was the chief secretary. The state claimed the chief secretary had been bypassed.

Nipon Mahanta, 50, another litigant from Sualkuchi, calls it a “political murder”. Mahanta’s role in 2001 involved visiting families of active militants in his area and persuading them to bring their sons back to the mainstream — dangerous work done on the promise of state support.
“The AGP government gave us the jobs based on a Cabinet decision. The Centre, then led by the BJP, supported these rehabilitation schemes,” Mahanta says. “But when the government changed, the new dispensation simply erased us.”

The winding road to victory

The litigants challenged their termination immediately. In 2002, a single judge of the Gauhati High Court ruled in their favour, holding that cancellation of appointments without notice violated natural justice. The court observed that since the Cabinet had approved the appointments, a bureaucratic technicality like the chief secretary’s signature could not override it.

The Assam government appealed. The order was stayed and the matter was eventually disposed of in November 2009, with directions to give the appointees a fair hearing before taking final action. Show-cause notices followed, but on March 9, 2010, the state again cancelled the appointments.

The appointees challenged this second cancellation. A single judge of the High Court quashed it, and a Division Bench upheld the decision.

“We thought we had won,” recalls Mukut Ranjan Sarma, 54, a former student leader from Nagaon who now survives on farming. “The high court saw through the government’s excuses. We were ready to join.”

The state then moved the Supreme Court, which on May 3, 2013, stayed the High Court ruling. The stay remained in force for nearly 12 years.

“For 12 years, we were in limbo,” says Dhrubajyoti. “We couldn’t apply for other government jobs because we were ‘overage’, and we couldn’t move on because we were waiting for the Supreme Court to affirm the High Court’s order. We were frozen in time.”

The financial toll has been devastating. The litigants say they pooled money, sold assets and took loans to hire lawyers in Guwahati and New Delhi.
“I wanted to buy a motorcycle when I was young,” says Mahanta. “I had saved money for it. That money went to the lawyers. I never bought the bike.”

Mukut Ranjan Sarma estimates he spent Rs 5–6 lakh on legal fees, travel to Delhi and related expenses. “What about the 24 years of lost salary? What about the pension I would have earned?”

While the Supreme Court’s December 3 judgment did not disagree on the merits that the 2001 termination was illegal, it accepted the state’s argument for paying Rs 5 lakh compensation due to the passage of time.

The litigants blame judicial delay, accusing the state of having “dragged its feet”. Court records show that in 2023 and 2024 alone, the state sought multiple adjournments to place file notings on record — documents that should have existed two decades ago.
“The government played a game of dates,” says Dhrubajyoti. “They knew that if they dragged it out long enough, the court would eventually say it’s too late to reinstate us.”

The delay is perhaps best illustrated by the career arc of their counsel, BK Sarma. He represented them in the Gauhati High Court in the early 2000s, was elevated as a judge in 2003, retired in 2016, and by the time the case reached final arguments in the Supreme Court, had returned to practice to represent the same clients.

Viewing the Rs 5 lakh compensation as an insult, the litigants are now considering a review petition seeking higher compensation.
“It [the compensation] is a one-time settlement that settles nothing,” says Mahanta. “It doesn’t account for inflation, it doesn’t account for interest and it certainly doesn’t account for a destroyed career.”